a_cardboard_box (u/a_cardboard_box)

a_cardboard_box commented on Covid-19 mRNA Vaccination and 4-Year All-Cause Mortality jamanetwork.com/journals/... · Posted by u/bpierre

disgruntledphd2 · 13 days ago

It's a term of art. The audience for this paper would understand, rather like many denizens of HN know what TDD is.

a_cardboard_box · 13 days ago

The paper doesn't even use it consistently. At first it uses "all-cause mortality" to mean "all causes except COVID", and then in the results section it uses the same phrase to mean "all causes including COVID". The whole purpose of terms of art is to increase the specificity of language, but they're not doing that here. Their usage of the term is confusing.

Edit: I'm wrong. I could have sworn it said that the groups had similar all-cause mortality, but it doesn't.

a_cardboard_box commented on Covid-19 mRNA Vaccination and 4-Year All-Cause Mortality jamanetwork.com/journals/... · Posted by u/bpierre

eddieroger · 14 days ago

Frame it as the safety of the vaccine, not the efficacy of it. If it was about efficacy, it would lead with the 25% lower risk because of COVID safety. But, these days, there are people who think vaccines are dangerous just because, so saying that taking the vaccine or not has equal mortality puts that to rest (or at least does for those who find science real).

a_cardboard_box · 14 days ago

Yes, but they incorrectly called it all-cause mortality under Findings. "Mortality" on it's own would be fine. "Mortality from other causes" would be better.

a_cardboard_box commented on The New AI Consciousness Paper astralcodexten.com/p/the-... · Posted by u/rbanffy

armchairhacker · a month ago

My philosophy is that consciousness is orthogonal to reality.

Whether or not anything is conscious has, by definition, no observable effect to anything else. Therefore, everything is "maybe" conscious, although "maybe" isn't exactly the right word. There are infinite different ways you can imagine being something else with the consciousness and capacity for sensations you have, which don't involve the thing doing anything it's not already. Or, you can believe everything and everyone else has no consciousness, and you won't mis-predict anything (unless you assume people don't react to being called unconscious...).

Is AI conscious? I believe "yes", but in a different way than humans, and in a way that somehow means I don't think anyone who believes "no" is wrong. Is AI smart? Yes in some ways: chess algorithms are smart in some ways, AI is smarter in more, and in many ways AI is still dumber than most humans. How does that relate to morality? Morality is a feeling, so when an AI makes me feel bad for it I'll try to help it, and when an AI makes a significant amount of people feel bad for it there will be significant support for it.

a_cardboard_box · a month ago

According to your view, the text you have written has nothing to do with consciousness.

a_cardboard_box commented on I made a 10¢ MCU Talk atomic14.com/2025/10/29/C... · Posted by u/iamflimflam1

sehugg · 2 months ago

Even easier is the 1-bit DPCM codec used on the NES. Go up or down one step each sample depending on the next bit. You can't get a square wave out of it, only a triangle, but it has a nostalgic quality.

a_cardboard_box · 2 months ago

The NES DPCM runs at up to 33kHz, so it actually has double the bitrate of the 2-bit 8kHz encoding used in the article. If you run it at 16kHz to match the bitrate, it will sound much worse.

a_cardboard_box commented on Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran'; gist.github.com/avestura/... · Posted by u/avestura

ravishi · 3 months ago

Do you get the irony of commenting this on a post about a single person complaining about how they are unfairly affected by sanctions put up against their country?

a_cardboard_box · 3 months ago

The post doesn't blame individual Americans. There is no irony.

a_cardboard_box commented on Why do some gamers invert their controls? theguardian.com/games/202... · Posted by u/zdw

regus · 3 months ago

I will never understand these people who invert their camera controls, especially in something like Dark Souls. You are playing as a knight not an airplane.

a_cardboard_box · 3 months ago

The stick is the player character's head. Pull back their head and they look up.

a_cardboard_box commented on Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs cnbc.com/2025/08/25/tech-... · Posted by u/Teever

nickff · 4 months ago

The requirement which is driving the posting is a requirement that they search for candidates other than the one specific person they have in mind. If they post it with 'already filled' in the posting, they would not be complying with the requirement. The requirement is usually driven by a law or some policy created outside the hiring process for that position, so the hiring manager(s) are not permitted to do what you suggest.

a_cardboard_box · 4 months ago

You seem to misunderstand the proposal. The proposal is that after they have done everything that is already legally required (advertise an open position for some amount of time etc), then they must amend the posting to include that the position is filled by an internal/external/H-1B hire. There is still a period of time when the position is advertised as open.

a_cardboard_box commented on Coinbase CEO explains why he fired engineers who didn't try AI immediately techcrunch.com/2025/08/22... · Posted by u/ed1024

tuesdaynight · 4 months ago

I don't agree with firing the engineer, but if your company is paying for a tool that could help your productivity and you don't even try it, I would like to know the reason for that. It's a job, they are paying your time and they are paying for a tool that can help you. At least try it.

a_cardboard_box · 4 months ago

Because I have plenty of opportunities that don't involve dancing for a micromanaging sociopath.

a_cardboard_box commented on The Math Is Haunted overreacted.io/the-math-i... · Posted by u/danabramov

tunesmith · 5 months ago

Yeah this seems like the specification/implementation problem. One can perfectly implement a bad spec, but coming up with the perfect spec is a human problem.

a_cardboard_box · 5 months ago

It's possible you could at least mitigate the problem by checking that what you've proven isn't trivial. If you slightly change a mathematical statement, it frequently becomes either trivially true or trivially false. So if you accidentally proved the wrong thing, there's a good chance that your proof can be shortened to a point that it becomes obviously wrong. For example, if you accidentally put "there exists" instead of "for all" in Fermat's last theorem, the proof is 1^3 + 1^3 != 1^3. That is obviously too short to prove FLT - it would have fit in Fermat's margin.